Progress isn't linear: An insight into depression
Sometimes one bad day can make all the good days feel worthless. Sometimes you can spend weeks working on yourself and bettering yourself and trying to build a stronger person, and it works. You build this strong, healthy person who has a more positive outlook on things, and then,
one
bad
day.
It's funny -but really just infuriating, how that works. How can you spend so much time on yourself and have weeks of feeling good, only to have this one bad day be so powerful and overwhelming it's like none of the other weeks counted? Like none of the other weeks meant anything. A harsh reminder that you're not okay. A deep, dark pit in your stomach telling you that the weeks of work you put into your mental health was a facade, a trick to keep your mind occupied until the next wave of depression hit.
The gut wrenching feeling of -is this it? Is my life going to filled with these periods of time where everything feels fine, only to be set on fire and burned to the ground when depression strikes again?
Depression is exhausting on a normal day, it strips you of hope and motivation, and you only need to watch any movie ever made, to know that hope is such a dangerous thing to lose.
So to be strong enough to make a stand against your depression (with hope and motivation taken from you) is like climbing up a brick wall with no ladder.
So imagine you are doing the impossible, by fighting to better yourself, fighting for these good weeks, this "happy" period of time, and it's working. You climb without the ladder. You feel better, you incorporate new habits into your life, you see old friends, you get a new job.
And then, this one day comes along and not only takes it all away, it ridicules you for ever thinking any of it could be real, that a life where you could beat depression was real? Ridiculous.
This is why depression is so dangerous, and it's not a side I see being spoken about at all.
Everyone knows depression is a disease of the mind that makes you sad, some people know it to cause loneliness, emptiness, lethargy, headaches, loss/gain of appetite...
But it's so much more than it's symptoms.
As mentioned above, it takes away your hope, your desire to get better. It's so hard to come out of a funk because you just don't want to.
I don't really know why I'm writing this (I'm okay -in case this scared anyone) I did recently have a bad day and I was thinking about how unfair it was that my head could become so thick and heavy with the thought of my progress being a massive joke on behalf of my depression.
But I woke up after a few days with a much clearer head, and none of my progress over the past few weeks have been undone, like my head had convinced me was the case. I'm still doing amazing.
I don't want to speak on behalf of anyone else and say "this is what depression is!" this is just how I experience it, and what I find the worst part of it.
A quote that always stays with me is "progress isn't linear" Which it isn't, it takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to get better, and you could get so. Damn. Close. To fully healing, then land back at the bottom again. It doesn't mean you won't get back up. It's not linear a process.
Something else that also massively resonates with me is a quote I heard from YouTuber Alivia D'andrea "Taking a step backward after a step forward is not a disaster. Remember every effort counts. It may seem small but you are still moving forward"
Shan x
one
bad
day.
It's funny -but really just infuriating, how that works. How can you spend so much time on yourself and have weeks of feeling good, only to have this one bad day be so powerful and overwhelming it's like none of the other weeks counted? Like none of the other weeks meant anything. A harsh reminder that you're not okay. A deep, dark pit in your stomach telling you that the weeks of work you put into your mental health was a facade, a trick to keep your mind occupied until the next wave of depression hit.
The gut wrenching feeling of -is this it? Is my life going to filled with these periods of time where everything feels fine, only to be set on fire and burned to the ground when depression strikes again?
Depression is exhausting on a normal day, it strips you of hope and motivation, and you only need to watch any movie ever made, to know that hope is such a dangerous thing to lose.
So to be strong enough to make a stand against your depression (with hope and motivation taken from you) is like climbing up a brick wall with no ladder.
So imagine you are doing the impossible, by fighting to better yourself, fighting for these good weeks, this "happy" period of time, and it's working. You climb without the ladder. You feel better, you incorporate new habits into your life, you see old friends, you get a new job.
And then, this one day comes along and not only takes it all away, it ridicules you for ever thinking any of it could be real, that a life where you could beat depression was real? Ridiculous.
This is why depression is so dangerous, and it's not a side I see being spoken about at all.
Everyone knows depression is a disease of the mind that makes you sad, some people know it to cause loneliness, emptiness, lethargy, headaches, loss/gain of appetite...
But it's so much more than it's symptoms.
As mentioned above, it takes away your hope, your desire to get better. It's so hard to come out of a funk because you just don't want to.
I don't really know why I'm writing this (I'm okay -in case this scared anyone) I did recently have a bad day and I was thinking about how unfair it was that my head could become so thick and heavy with the thought of my progress being a massive joke on behalf of my depression.
But I woke up after a few days with a much clearer head, and none of my progress over the past few weeks have been undone, like my head had convinced me was the case. I'm still doing amazing.
I don't want to speak on behalf of anyone else and say "this is what depression is!" this is just how I experience it, and what I find the worst part of it.
A quote that always stays with me is "progress isn't linear" Which it isn't, it takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to get better, and you could get so. Damn. Close. To fully healing, then land back at the bottom again. It doesn't mean you won't get back up. It's not linear a process.
Something else that also massively resonates with me is a quote I heard from YouTuber Alivia D'andrea "Taking a step backward after a step forward is not a disaster. Remember every effort counts. It may seem small but you are still moving forward"
Shan x
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